Authorities don’t know exactly what led a 24-year-old Walmart employee of an Arizona Walmart store to turn on her coworkers, but say that she had a series of potentially deadly plans for them that fell through. What began as a dispute inside the store could have turned tragic when she returned with a rifle, ammunition, a knife, and a torch. [More]

When there’s free money involved, there’s always going to be the temptation to take it, even if you know it’s not right. But yet another good consumer has done an honorable deed, this time by returning almost $400 that unexpectedly shot out of a drive-thru bank ATM. [More]

There are responsible citizens, and then there’s a guy from Florida who flew to Connecticut to voluntarily turn himself in after he received a warrant for his arrest on charges that he stole a TV in 1989. [More]

If you work in a restaurant, finding a large amount of cash on the table might be one of those moments where you think you’ve just lucked out and scored a huge tip from some abnormally generous person, and you figure the money is yours to keep. Or, if you’re like one Applebee’s server who recently discovered $32,000 left behind, you turn it in and save the day. [More]

Quite often at Consumerist, we hear stories that involve negative situations or feature consumers doing bad things. So when we read about people out there doing nice things for each other, we like to take note. To wit: a woman in Maine has started a campaign to help make sure all residents are dressed warmly against the cold this winter, by taping coats to light poles around town. [More]

Stumbling upon a pile of cash might be an easy way to get rich quick for some, but being the kind of person who turns in lost money has its own rewards, too. There’s the satisfied feeling one might get from being a good human… and also there could be the gift of food, like the guy who scored free Domino’s pizza for a year after returning a wad of cash he found stashed in his box of wings.

We’ve heard a good share of “pay it forward” stories at coffee shops and elsewhere, where customers ask to pay for the next person’s order, sometimes leading to a chain of people willing to brighten up a stranger’s day. But one Pennsylvania Dunkin’ Donuts has probably seen more of these pay it forward acts than others: the manager says it happens every Friday, no matter what, like clockwork.

We’ve all had that moment: something you need is suddenly missing — a receipt, a paycheck, your kid’s birth certificate — and a horrible thought strikes you — “Did I throw it out?!?” A Georgia man had the weight of certain lifelong regret sitting on his shoulders when he realized he’d chucked two lottery tickets worth $10,000, thinking they weren’t winners.

It’s one thing to lose your phone on the street, in the back of a cab or anywhere on dry land where a good Samaritan might come by and decide to help find its owner. But after one guy watched his phone sink to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean back in March, he figured that thing was gone for good. Enter: scuba divers going for a swim who just happened to find his device in the waterproof bag it had sunk in.

You know the feeling — you’ve only got a little time left on the parking meter but you’re stuck somewhere, forcing you to face either a parking ticket, or even worse, having your car towed. One woman who was unable to feed the meter after spending hours in the ER with her infant son reached out to her fellow mothers, and was rewarded with an outpouring of generosity from total strangers.

When you do a good deed, you probably don’t do it just because you’re anticipating a good reward. But at the very least, a pleasant “thank you” is surely something you could expect. But one Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ‘n Biscuits customer says not only was he not thanked for returning between $4,000 to $4,500 in cash he found in a bag that was supposed to contain his food, but was treated with downright disrespect by restaurant staff.

There are many bad or just plain annoying things that can happen when your belongings are mixed up with someone else’s in the airport security line — someone else could be going through your private information, or trying to sell your electronic equipment. But when is it kind of cool that a total stranger has your stuff? When that stranger happens to be a professional football player.

While there are many bad consumers in the world, there are also those out there who recognize they haven’t done the right thing, and seek to make amends, even if it’s years later. That’s how it went down for a pizza shop owner who was surprised to find a letter in the mail from a customer who’d written a bad check in 2002 — and enclosed a money order to make up for it.

When you’re hungry for a chicken sandwich, you’re hungry for a chicken sandwich. But while most people might settle for taking a bag filled with a few thousand bucks in cash, one Burger King drive-thru customer was nice enough to return free money and just take the food instead.

Usually the kind of stuff treasure hunters armed with metal detectors pick up off the beach is of the loose change and worthless crap variety. But every now and again, something valuable shows up just begging to be reunited with its long lost owner. Such was the lucky case for a man who lost his gold class ring 35 years ago.

We’d all like to think we could do the right thing and be brave enough to dash into danger to save someone else, but the reality is, it sounds pretty scary. One quick-thinking Starbucks barista in New York City had his movie moment when he ran into the street to help a cab driver and his passenger after a manhole cover exploded underneath their vehicle.

Tipping a lot for pizza isn’t unusual — how else can one adequately express thanks for delivering a cheesey piece of heaven? — but in most cases, “a lot” means maybe $10. But when a bunch of college students pooled their resources to make one pizza guy’s night, they managed to drop a pretty hefty chunk of change on just two pizzas, giving him a $1,268 tip. [More]